to establish our right to
be here as long as we could, so discovering the world day by day, and
ourselves to the world, and ourselves to ourselves. To live it out,
resisting the power that destroys so long as might be--that was the
divine secret.

"Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!"

The voice moaned out the words again and again. Through the sounds
there came another inner voice, that resolved all the crude, primitive
thoughts here defined; vague, elusive, in Parpon's own brain.

The girl's life should be saved at any cost, even if to save it meant
the awful and certain doom his mother had whispered to him over the bed
an hour before.

He turned and went into the house. The old woman bent above Elise,
watching intently, her eyes straining, her lips anxiously compressed.

"My son," she said, "she will die in an hour if I don't give her more.
If I do, she may die at once. If she gets well, she will be--" She made
a motion to her eyes.

"Blind, mother, blind!" he whispered, and he looked round the room. How
good was the sight of the eyes! "Perhaps she'd rather die," said the old
woman. "She is unhappy." She was thinking of her own far, bitter past,
remembered now after so many years. "Misery and blindness too--ah! What
right have I to make her blind? It's a great risk, Parpon, my dear son."

"I must, I must, for your sake. Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!" cried
Elise again out of her delirium.

The stricken girl had answered for Parpon. She had decided for herself.
Life! that was all she prayed for: for another's sake, not her own.

Her own mother slept on, in the corner of the room, unconscious of the
terrible verdict hanging in the balance.

Madame Degardy quickly emptied into a cup of liquor the strange brown
powder, mixed it, and held it to the girl's lips, pouring it slowly
down.

Once, twice, during the next hour, a low, anguished voice filled the
room; but just as dawn came, Parpon stooped and tenderly wiped a soft
moisture from the face, lying so quiet and peaceful now against the
pillow.

"She breathes easy, poor pretty bird!" said the old woman gently.

"She'll never see again?" asked Parpon mournfully. "Never a thing while
she lives," was the whispered reply.

"But she has her life," said the dwarf; "she wished it so."

"What's the good!" The old woman had divined why Elise had wanted to
live.

The dwarf did not answer. His eyes wandered about abstractedly, and
fell again upon Elise's mother sleep